With little budget, we needed to get our loyal Kiwi fan base talking, both at home and abroad. Fortunately, national pride runs high down south, and there’s nothing Kiwis love more than talking about, well… themselves. After all, from our rebel Prime Minister David Lange to our indomitable All Blacks, New Zealand has a long history of being the underdog, of going against the grain and punching above our weight. So what better way of raising Kiwi pride over Christmas than by showing how our tiny country could impact the biggest, most complex organisation in the world – Santa’s Workshop.

We created ‘A Very Merry Mistake’ – an integrated campaign that celebrated a particularly distinctive, and notoriously confusing quality of New Zealanders – their accents. More specifically, an accent that proved particularly troublesome for the one person who can’t afford any misunderstandings over Christmas – Santa.

We launched with an online film, which showed Santa and his elves struggling with New Zealand’s not-quite English. Fortunately, Air New Zealand, those experts in all things Kiwi, were on hand to save Christmas, translating the requests from down South. But the campaign didn’t end there. Through a social promo that showcased our global network, we got Santa’s hilariously mis-made toys, from Puggy Banks to Biscuit Balls and Ear Planes, into the hands of children young and old, all over the world. And to continue our helping hand, lighthearted extension videos offered pronunciation tutorials to help the world understand the unique Kiwi accent.

‘A Very Merry Mistake’ proved a very big success. Our online film received a 10/10 Facebook relevancy score, and, in the first 10 hours, with $0 spent on media, our social audience spread our film far and wide generating:

• 670,000 organic views

• 2.5 million organic reach

• 92,000 engagements, 20k shares, 25k Facebook reactions

By the end of the first week we had achieved:

10.3 million views (Target of 6m)

#1 trending on YouTube

22 million reach

553,000 engagements

384 million PR reach

Creating global noise with minimal budget over the busiest time of year is no small feat. But fortunately, Air New Zealand had a secret weapon – a highly engaged social fanbase of New Zealanders both at home and abroad. We needed a socially-driven campaign that would powerfully resonate with our Kiwi audience, so they would share it far and wide, while still appealing to the global audience it would amplify out to.

Our strategy, therefore, was to show our uniquely Kiwi take on Christmas.

Because, just like our airline, New Zealanders do things a little different, and that makes all the difference.

With January’s peak travel period approaching, Air New Zealand – a small national airline with very big ambitions - wanted to raise consideration and awareness of their global flight network. That’s a little tricky at Christmas time, when much bigger brands with much bigger budgets are trying to do the same. With minimal budget, Air New Zealand tasked us with creating an idea that would cut through the noise of the Christmas period and ensure that their small voice was heard loud and clear.